This year the Stewart Parker Trust New Playwright Bursary of £7,500 has been awarded jointly to Christian O'Reilly who wrote The Good Father for Druid Theatre Company and to Tim Loane (an actor in several Druid productions in the late '80s and early '90s) who wrote Caught Red Handed for the Tinderbox Theatre Company in Belfast.
Set up in honour of the late Belfast playwright, Stewart Parker, each year the Trust offers awards to new Irish playwrights to encourage new writing for the theatre throughout Ireland.
Christian O'Reilly is a Galway-based scriptwriter whose first full-length stage production, The Good Father, was directed by Garry Hynes and staged by Druid for the 25th Galway Arts Festival last summer. The production had a successful tour earlier this year visiting Project, Portlaoise, Ennis, Tallaght and Galway. Christian has written The Play for radio, On Home Ground for television and is the writer of two short films, The Birthday and The Kiss of Life. His one-act play, It Just Came Out was staged by Druid as part of its Debut series and later by Spotlight and then Tyger theatre companies.
Tim Loane also has a strong Druid connection, having acted in several Druid productions (Werewolves 1992, Look Back in Anger 1991 and Wild Harvest 1989) in Galway.